CHART OF THE DAY: Yahoo Still The King Of Email, But Losing Ground To Gmail

Yahoo's (YHOO) webmail service still has twice as many users as Microsoft's (MSFT) Hotmail, its nearest competitor, according to the most recent data available from comScore.

The bad news for Yahoo is that it's losing users. In fact, the only major webmail provider gaining ground is Google's (GOOG) third-place Gmail, which is up 27% from a year ago. AOL, meanwhile, trails the field and is bleeding users at an alarming rate (down 20% over the past year).

Why does this matter? Webmail is an important anchor, tying users to a particular site, and making them more likely to turn to it for news, entertainment, search, and other applications.